There were hundreds of sessions at this week's Microsoft TechEd 2011 conference in Atlanta, covering a wide swath of topics for IT professionals and developers. There were sessions on everything from Forefront Unified Gateway, to the consumerization of IT. I've been slogging through the slides -- which Microsoft is posting along with the Webcast presentations from the show -- looking for some of the more interesting tidbits. (At least interesting to this Microsoft watcher. Your interests may, and most definitely will, vary.)

I've pulled out a handful of the slides I felt explained Microsoft's various products and strategies most succintly and tellingly. The first one here is Microsoft's latest cloud-computing architectural diagram. Microsoft's cloud diagrams have come a long way since the company first attempted to explain its public/private/hybrid strategy. This one highlights the key products Microsoft is positioning as being central to its public and private cloud offerings.

The System Center team at Microsoft has a full plate this year, with lots of beta, release candidate (RC) and final ship targets on its schedule. Note that we now have an official date for the coming "Concero" hybrid cloud-management portal: Both the beta and final versions of Concero are slated for the second half of calendar 2011. I have to say, it's refreshing to see a Microsoft team that is willing to share with customers and the general public such a complete version of its 2012 roadmap.

At TechEd, Microsoft began sharing a few tidbits about its feature set for its next version of Visual Studio, which company officials are publicly calling "Visual Studio v.Next," but which this slide indicates is internally known as Visual Studio 2012. Microsoft has been on an every-two-year ship schedule with Visual Studio for the past few years, so I'm not sure why they've gone to the dark side that some other teams at Microsoft have and are shying away from using the product name that everyone inside and outside the company is using. Microsoft officials shared information on some of the VS 2012 application lifecycle management (ALM) features of the product this week, but wouldn't talk beta or final ship-date targets.

Microsoft execs also used TechEd this week to go deeper on what's coming in the next version of SQL Server, codenamed "Denali." This slide compares the technology priorities for the past two SQL Server releases with the coming Denali release. Microsoft so far has delivered two Community Technology Previews of Denali. The third will be coming later this summer, officials said this week. The SQL Server team still won't say when it plans to deliver the final release of SQL Server; there's been talk that it could be very late in 2011 or some time in 2012.

This TechEd slide includes three words that, not so long ago, you'd never see on a Microsoft-approved slide: iPhone, iPad and Android. Earlier this year, Microsoft officials said the company is planning to offer technology (System Center Configuration Manager 2012) that will help IT admins manage these non-Microsoft platforms. At TechEd, Microsoft's message was that it also will help developers write for these platforms, as well, using its development tools.

As my readers know, I have an unnatural love for architectural diagrams. This one caught my eye, as it breaks down into layers the various pieces of the Microsoft platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, which is Azure. The solid blue boxes are the pieces of Azure that are already available; the dotted-line boxes are pieces that are coming over the next several months.

Yay! Another architectural diagram! This is a picture of the near-term roadmap for Microsoft's middleware platform, known as AppFabric. There are two different AppFabrics that currently don't have a whole lot in common: A version for Windows Server and a version for Azure. As this slide indicates, the AppFabric teams are releasing between two and three drops per year of AppFabric technologies for both the server and the cloud. At TechEd this week, Microsoft delivered a May Community Technology Preview of AppFabric for Azure, and said there'd be a June CTP coming, as well. These two CTPs deliver some of the AppFabric enhancements Microsoft outlined at the Professional Developers Conference in the fall of 2010.

"Hybrid" is becoming an increasingly used word inside Microsoft, in terms of how it expects its users to develop and deploy applications, going forward. Some pieces of the customers' apps will remain on premises, while other pieces can and will be deployed in the cloud. This slide, while specific to Coca Cola, provides a good example of what hybrid really means, in my opinion. It also highlights the fact that users will be mixing and matching not just Microsoft technologies, but also some third-party line-of-business apps (like SAP, in this case), when deploying hybrid solutions.

In a session outlining Microsoft's evolving embedded strategy, I found this slide that puts three of Microsoft's video/TV platforms all together (something that doesn't happen very often). Microsoft moved its embedded division under its Server and Tools organization during the past few months, and has begun emphasizing the need to manage the growing web of Windows-embedded platforms out there, as a result. When you hear Microsoft execs mention "Connected Media Devices," what they really seem to mean are set-top boxes, DVRs and TVs. Microsoft is licensing various embedded versions of Windows to OEMs who want to put Windows inside these devices, while it also is licensing MediaRoom, its IPTV solution, to broadcasters worldwide.

As the Windows team continues to labor on Windows 8, which will be Microsoft's 'real' operating system for tablets, Microsoft and its PC partners are continuing to try to make a purse out of a sow's ear and sell Windows 7 tablets for the next year-plus. At TechEd, Microsoft officials pitched yet again why Windows 7 makes a good tablet operating system. Microsoft is playing up the security, manageability and customizability features of Windows 7 tablets that are coming to market in the next few months as what users really want and need. Microsoft's salesforce is using an almost identical slide in pitching customers who are buying and/or thinking of buying iPads to try to convince them that Windows 7 tablets are more versatile and business-ready.

Yay! Another architectural diagram! This is a picture of the near-term roadmap for Microsoft's middleware platform, known as AppFabric. There are two different AppFabrics that currently don't have a whole lot in common: A version for Windows Server and a version for Azure. As this slide indicates, the AppFabric teams are releasing between two and three drops per year of AppFabric technologies for both the server and the cloud. At TechEd this week, Microsoft delivered a May Community Technology Preview of AppFabric for Azure, and said there'd be a June CTP coming, as well. These two CTPs deliver some of the AppFabric enhancements Microsoft outlined at the Professional Developers Conference in the fall of 2010.

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network.
Got a tip? Se...
Full Bio

Disclosure

Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.